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Analyses of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons
Published in Paul J. Lioy, Joan M. Daisey, Toxic Air Pollution, 1987
There are a number of other points related to PAH levels that will be discussed in this chapter. One is the possibility of using PAH profiles to establish the nature of the dominant sources of these pollutants at various sites. A PAH profile is a catalog of the relative amounts of different PAH relative to an index compound. This raises the issue of PAH reactivity. Many of these compounds are potentially reactive under ambient conditions in the presence of ultraviolet light, oxides of nitrogen, acid aerosols, ozone, singlet oxygen and hydroxyl radical. If the ambient environment is a reaction vessel for PAH, then they might “lose the memory of their sources,” and PAH profiles will merely represent the conditions of the “ambient reaction vessel.” On the other hand, differential PAH reactivity (i.e., a reactive PAH such as cyclopenta(cd)pyrene versus an unreactive one such as benzo(j)fluoranthene) may help in the understanding of long-range transport. It is possible that ambient reactivity may explain some of the winter/summer concentration differences that will be described later. Perhaps the most important aspect of PAH reactivity is the formation of derivatives that are also mutagenic. Thus, while the PAH pyrene is noncarcinogenic and nonmutagenic, 1-nitropyrene, which is found in quantities comparable to BaP, is a carcinogen in animals and a direct mutagen in bacterial bioassay (Rosenkranz, 1982, 1984). Some of these derivatives, for example the dinitropyrenes, are such strong carcinogens that even very tiny conversions to these compounds are cause for concern. The potential formation of PAH derivatives will be discussed later in this chapter.
Nitrated polycyclic aromatic compounds in the atmospheric environment: A review
Published in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 2021
Juping Yan, Xiaoping Wang, Ping Gong, Chuanfei Wang
The concentrations of total nitro-PAHs in gas and particle phases in different regions of the world are summarized in Figure 2a and c. Previous studies have pointed out that 1-Nitropyrene (1-NPYR) is strictly from direct vehicles emissions not from coal and biomass burning, which can be used as tracers of vehicle emissions (Huang et al., 2015; Inomata et al., 2015). The global distribution of 1-NPYR is therefore analyzed and presented in Figure 2b and d.